==== ====
Excellent Sites a Must to See
www.howtoplaybasssaxophone.net
==== ====
In 1952, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) announced the International
Geophysical Year (IGY), a time span between July 1957 to December 1958. This period was to be
filled with numerous scientific experiments and studies about Earth. It was in 1955 that the Soviet
Union surprised the world by announcing the plan to orbit a satellite in the International
Geophysical Year. As this was the time of great rivalry between the United States and the Soviet
Union, US President Eisenhower promised that the United States would orbit a satellite in this
period themselves. This was the start of the Space Race.
Both countries had missiles in development, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). Their
mission was the same on both sides: To deliver a single nuclear warhead over an intercontinental
distance. But as the Soviet warhead was much heavier than the US one, the Soviets developed,
from the beginning on, a stronger rocket, which showed very useful later in history for use as a
space launcher. In the United States, the satellite should have been orbited by an all-civil rocket,
the Vanguard.
Sputnik 1 was launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957. It was a shock for the western
hemisphere, all forth the United States. Not only that the Soviets had orbited a satellite, it was the
mass that shocked the governmental authorities. Though the Sputnik itself weighed only 84
kilograms, the third stage of the rocket orbited the Earth as well. And this stage alone weighed
about 7.5 tonnes. In contrast, the US satellite, named like its launcher Vanguard, had a mass of
only 1.36 kilograms and the rocket was more like a patchwork. Tauntingly said, the Americans put
every kind of rocket together they could find. Not that surprising that the maiden launched failed
only a few seconds after lift-off.
But in the progress of developing the first satellites, the United States slowly recognized their
shortfall in rocket technology and allowed Wernher von Braun and his Army Ballistic Missile
Agency (ABMA) to reinforce a military Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), the Redstone,
with two additional stages, so that this launcher, now called Jupiter-C, was able to deliver a small
payload into orbit. The first US satellite, Explorer 1, was successfully put into orbit on January 31,
1958. In the meantime, the Soviets had launched a dog onboard Sputnik 2, a satellite with a mass
of 508 kilograms. But already in this very early phase, one difference showed up.
While the Soviets were able to put large payloads into orbit, their scientific payloads often suffered
under the backlog in electronics and the kind of the academic landscape. Explorer 1, for example,
although weighing only a bit more than a kilogram, gave valuable information about a radiation belt
around the Earth, later called the Van-Allen Belt after the professor who developed the instrument
onboard the satellite. In contrast the Soviets had problems to exchange data and information as
the whole space program was highly classified.
It soon became clear for both sides, that space flight was a perfect environment to show their
assumed technological supremacy over each other. Both thought that they could document the
superiority of their respective administrations. That's why both of them early envisaged a manned
space flight. The Soviets approached their goal with a relatively simple solution. A sphere-shaped
capsule with no possibility for the spaceman to control or steer the craft.
On the other side of the Earth, the Americans had two concepts under investigation. They had a
very successful experimental flight program, the X-15. One option was to develop a next
evolutionary step of this craft, the reusable like a plane X-20. First to be carried under a Mach-3
bomber, the B-70, up the atmosphere to fly ballistic flight profiles. Later the craft should have been
fitted onto a Titan rocket in order to fly orbital missions. As the realisation of this program would
have taken a long time, it was decided to initiate the "Man in Space Soonest" program, that later
became the Mercury project. The X-20 was kept alive for a few years as an Air Force program but
was then cancelled. One can only speculate how space flight would have developed if the United
States had chosen a fully reusable craft from the beginning on.
After these initial competitions between the two Superpowers about the firsts, like first satellite,
first man in space, first "space walk", both states soon targeted a new major goal: the moon.
Although the Soviets denied until its decline in 1991 all the time that they had a moon program, the
whole program is clear today. Both countries depended with their ambitious programs on large
boosters: the Saturn V on the US side and the N-1 on the Soviet side. Today one can say, that the
N-1 was the only major failure of the Soviet or today Russian space program (beside the point,
that not a single Mars probe ever functioned as intended, if ever reaching Mars).
But it was a very serious duel. Both rivals took great risks in achieving their goals. And as no one
has luck for all times, both had to mourn about first victims. Vladimir Komarov died on the first
manned flight of a new capsule, the Soyuz 1. The United States lamented about the crew of Apollo
1, Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Virgil "Gus" Grissom.
But nonetheless the United States landed on the moon in 1969 and after a third failure in trying to
launch their super-rocket N-1 the Soviets cancelled their moon program. But this was not the end
of the Space Race. It seemed that the United States had won, but the Soviets had an ace in the
hole. They switched from the exploration of the moon to a completely different goal: manned
space stations. Salyut 1 was launched on April 19, 1971. The first crew that docked with the
station, Soyuz 11, directly achieved a new endurance record of 23 days, the obviously new goal of
the Space Race. Sadly, the crew of Soyuz 11 died at re-entry due to an open valve.
As the United States launched their first space station, Skylab, in 1973, the Soviet Union already
had Salyut 2 in orbit and gained a lot of experience in long time stays in microgravity and about
operating space stations. But Salyut 2 was still a small station compared to Skylab and had much
in common with the first one of its name. So it was not very surprising that the first crew of Skylab
set a new endurance record in 1973. After the United States stopped their Apollo-based flights
with the Apollo-Soyuz-Test-Project (ASTP) in 1975 to wait for their new Space Transportation
System or Space Shuttle, the Soviet Union continued their space station program with a steady
pace. In regular intervals, new stations were orbited and each of them incorporated improvements
and new features. With Salyut 6, launched in 1977, the Soviets entered a new phase. This was the
first station that had two docking ports, so it could be replenished by unmanned cargo transports
as well as receiving guests on an additional Soyuz ferry.
The Space Race practically ended with the mothballing of Skylab but still both states walked
somewhat side by side: both opened their spacecrafts to international guests. The Soviet Union
started their Intercosmos program in 1978 with the first flight of a Czech cosmonaut, Vladimir
Remek, the Space Shuttle saw the first non-American to fly in 1983, German Ulf Merbold.
Although during the first half of the 1980s the rivalry between both countries grew over again, the
signs of a new Space Race were only a short flame up: Neither the United States with their space
station Freedom, nor the Soviet Union with their Shuttle-craft Buran had the will or money to push
these programs through.
With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, a new era was to become reality. US-built rockets like the
Atlas flew with Russian-built engines. The Space Shuttle docked with the Mir space station and
Americans stayed for 6 months onboard the station while Russian cosmonauts flew on the Shuttle.
And today we have the International Space Station ISS.
But this was only the end of the first part: A new Space Race already waited on the horizon. To be
more precise, not only one, but instead three Space Races would soon become reality.
Watch out for the next parts of the Space Race.
Klaus Schmidt writes about the developments in spaceflight at http://space-future.blogspot.com
and The Space Fellowship.
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Klaus_Schmidt
==== ====
Excellent Sites a Must to See
www.howtoplaybasssaxophone.net
==== ====